Documentary director turns to fiction and makes it sing of guilt for climate destruction
Long, overindulgent and absolutely riveting, the first feature film by Harvard grad Joshua Oppenheimer is hard to make heads or tails of as it explores life after the end of the world. The cinematic visionary who blew audiences away with his imaginative documentaries on the Indonesian death squads of the 1960s (“The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence,” both Oscar nominated) saddles up with Tilda Swinton, it boy George McKay of “1917” – already having a banner year with “The Beast” and the hard-hitting “Femme” to his credit – and Michael Shannon, who starred in the similarly themed, “Take Shelter” (2011). They play Mother, Son and Father, respectively. Along with “Nightbitch,” also currently in theaters, this no-name concept seems to be the arthouse convention du jour.
We catch up with the trio living the posh life in a bunker a half-mile underground after the rest of the world has been burned to a crisp. The shelter is in the labyrinth of an abandoned salt mine bought presciently decades ago by Father, a former oil exec (who, by proximity, had a hand in the incineration of humankind). Son was born in the bowels of that salt mine, and the well-tended-to trio are not alone in their enclave. With them are a doctor (Lennie James, “The Walking Dead”), a cook (Bronagh Gallagher) and a butler (Tim McInnerny, “Gladiator II”). Everything for the most is safe and good, and their biggest discomfort is the bitter sourness of the wine they vinify. Then an interloper drops in – almost literally. The arrival of the young woman known as Girl (Moses Ingram) is not welcomed. Mother and Father have a xenophobic policy and initially restrain and restrict Girl; eventually they admit her into their midst, where as you can guess, sexual tensions with Son rise quickly and cause social dynamics and routines to shift.
Did I mention that “The End” – not to be confused with the similarly titled and themed 2013 film “This is the End” starring Jonah Hill and James Franco – is a musical? For his two Indonesian hit-squad docs, Oppenheimer stepped outside the boundaries of nonnarrative convention and gave former squad leaders resources (money and cameras) to make their own films depicting their recollection of their parts in the bloody overthrow. One made a garish musical with former killers dressed in drag and singing alongside the cascading waters of a grand waterfall. Could that have been the inspiration for the cast of “The End” to break into song in the dusty corridors of a salt mine? The probability is too overwhelming to deny.
The overall fabric of “The End” is not too far from L.Q. Jones’s postapocalyptic“A Boy and His Dog” (1975), in which Don Johnson as that “boy” discovers an underground Eden and ultimately upends an order serving mostly an elite few. Besides the gender role swap, the other notable delta between the films is the causality for eradication – global nuclear annihilation or human-triggered climate change catastrophes. Oppenheimer doesn’t harangue the audience by climbing onto the climate change pulpit, a theme more clearly held off in the corner of the frame. For his microsociety, there’s no wrestling with what-ifs, because it’s already happened, but members have guilt and admit to things they did that led to the perishing of others.
Given the texture of his films, it’s clear that the cleansing power of confession is something that drives Oppenheimer – it was the thing he sought to educe from Indonesian militia leaders after decades of denial. The result in those films was stunning, emotionally impactful and horrific; here, narrative artifice diminishes that impact, but “The End” is effectual in its own right. It is gorgeously framed and shot, with near period-piece delicacy, and the performers create sharp characters and prove quite capable when dropping into song. The offset between Swinton’s subtle, ethereal otherworldliness and Shannon’s gruff bristle takes a while to digest, but serves the film well. “The End” does go on a bit too long for the concept, but effectively provokes with themes of isolationism, empowered entitlement and one’s responsibility to a fellow human, as well as stewardship of the vast blue orb we’ve indelibly infected through negligence and avarice.
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